Every genre succumbs to gentrification at some point- as equipment becomes cheaper, as crowds become younger, there seems to be a sheepish attitude towards producers - how they can follow a mundane, linear sound, and make money.Collection: Attitude
You can be very connected, computers are great, they can get you a ticket to Venezuela in five minutes; brilliant. But if you know your music and your history, you can make that work as a tool. If you don't, you're working as a slave to it.Collection: Computers
Thailand is a really beautiful place, culturally and spiritually. You appreciate it the longer you stay.
I think drum'n'bass music did for the electronic world what graffiti did for the world of art because it was raw and everybody wanted to take from the raw.
Rob Playford is a phenomenal engineer, but he doesn't have his own ideas, he doesn't make his own music. But what he does have is a fantastic width and berth to throw loads of creative ideas at him.
I grew up on Steel Pulse, Bob Marley, Public Image Ltd., Sex Pistols, The Jam and somewhere in the middle was The Specials.
I've always seen music as colours, with basses maybe translating to dark blues, and trebles as yellows and ochres and a general sense of lights coming through.
Art and music is so important for young people - the arts need to be supported and I think there are so many Clifford Prices out there like me.
Childhood was abusive and horrible, I endured some stuff I don't even want to talk about. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.
If I was running a British School of classical music I'd employ Tai Chi teachers to help the conductors at the end of their lessons.
From where I've come from, I look back at everything, all these people that influenced my life as a kid growing up in a really bad environment, it just makes it all worthwhile in terms of the recognition.
I've always been a big champion of saying what we do today creates tomorrow. When you're young, you don't realise all of this stuff, and from an early age I was very conscious of what was going on in my environment.
I've been moved around my whole life and it's been documented, so if you get paid loads of money to go on TV and act like a right idiot... great stuff!
Reinvention is the biggest gift I've been given. I've gone from graffiti artist to jewellery maker, urban musician to conductor.
When I play in Hong Kong I go alternative, from Wu Tang Clan to 'Blue Monday,' and then for the last 45 minutes, if they deserve it, I play beautiful drum 'n' bass.
Mother' is something people can't swallow. It was about me visualising my connection with my mother, my journey through her belly, and it's 60 minutes long - it was never going to be understood by the masses.
Timeless' is like the little sister, but 'Journeyman' is the big brother - it's what I'll take to the grave.
The layers you get in graffiti, the ornateness, you can hear it in my music. I paint with my music. It's a form of synaesthesia.
If you want to talk about EDM, let's talk about Detroit underground music, Chicago house and let's talk about all the things that got us to this place. We all get on the train of dance music. We need to all respectfully look through the carriages that have come before us and realize how we got here.
My whole thing with EDM is, if you have integrity and yet you regress in how you've been as an artist, there's something not quite right there. If you're just here to get paid, I find that very culturally indifferent.
When you go into the studio, you have to know what you're going in there for. I went into the studio because I had a voice and I wanted to change things, and I don't necessarily mean my bank account. The money is almost a B factor, a side product.
I see electronic music as loads of monkeys pushing buttons and me being one of them. But I think my album 'Timeless' stands the test of time.
When I was growing up in the 1980s in the Midlands, I felt abandoned and misunderstood. Then I chose drum 'n' bass and graffiti as my subcultures - which didn't really help.
Anyone who asks if graffiti is really art should be cast out into a field, because they're Neanderthals.
I've always felt mixed race. Or as my music teacher said during a lesson: 'You are a mulatto.' I always felt there were white people, black, and then people like me in the middle.
I think most albums should be 13 tracks, to be fair. It's a matter of interest. It's quality over quantity.
I obviously felt a very strong need to be a part of a family. Looking at trains and thinking 'These kids are writing their names from one end of the city to the other,' I finally felt like I'd found one.
I use the same big studios that everybody else uses, but my attitude once inside is that of a total barbarian.
That's why I want to screw with the abyss of technology, play God with science, so I can hop, skip and slide back and forth through time.
If I got hit by a bus tomorrow, you'd get people going: 'Oh, we should make 'Mother' into an opera, it's what he would have wanted.'